Natalie Spencer was finding life full of interest that winter. Now and
then she read the headings in the newspapers, not because she was really
interested, but that she might say, at the dinner-party which was to her
the proper end of a perfect day:
“What do you think of Turkey declaring her independence?”
Or:
“I see we have taken the Etoile Wood.”
Clayton had overheard her more than once, and had marveled at the
dexterity with which, these leaders thrown out, she was able to avoid
committing herself further.
The new house engrossed her. She was seeing a great deal of Rodney,
too, and now and then she had fancied that there was a different tone in
Rodney's voice when he addressed her. She never analyzed that tone,
or what it suggested, but it gave her a new interest in life. She was
always marceled, massaged, freshly manicured. And she had found a new
facial treatment. Clayton, in his room at night, could hear the
sharp slapping of flesh on flesh, as Madeleine gently pounded certain
expensive creams into the skin of her face and neck.
She refused all forms of war activity, although now and then she put
some appeal before Clayton and asked him if he cared to send a check. He
never suggested that she answer any of these demands personally, after
an experience early in the winter.
“Why don't you send it yourself?” he had asked. “Wouldn't you like it to
go in your name?”
“It doesn't matter. I don't know any of the committee.”
He had tried to explain what he meant.
“You might like to feel that you are doing something.”
“I thought my allowance was only to dress on. If I'm to attend to
charities, too, you'll have to increase it.”
“But,” he argued patiently, “if you only sent them twenty-five dollars,
did without some little thing to do it, you'd feel rather more as though
you were giving, wouldn't you?”
“Twenty-five dollars! And be laughed at!”
He had given in then.
“If I put an extra thousand dollars to your account to-morrow, will you
check it out to this fund?”
“It's too much.”
“Will you?'
“Yes, of course,” she had agreed, indifferently. And he had notified
her that the money was in the bank. But two months later the list of
contributors was published, and neither his name nor Natalie's was among
them.
Toward personal service she had no inclination whatever. She would
promise anything, but the hour of fulfilling always found her with
something else to do. Yet she had kindly impulses, at times, when
something occurred to take her mind from herself. She gave liberally to
street mendicants. She sent her car to be used by those of her friends
who had none. She was lavish with flowers to the sick--although Clayton
paid her florist bills.
She was lavish with money--but never with herself.
In the weeks after the opening of the new year Clayton found himself
watching her. He wondered sometimes just what went on in her mind during
the hours when she sat, her hands folded, gazing into space. He could
not tell. He surmised her planning, always planning; the new house, a
gown, a hat, a party.
But late in January he began to think that she was planning something
else. Old Terry Mackenzie had been there one night, and he had
asserted not only that war was coming, but that we would be driven to
conscription to raise an army.
“They've all had to come to it,” he insisted. “And we will, as sure as
God made little fishes. You can't raise a million volunteers for a war
that's three thousand miles away.”
“You mean, conscription among the laboring class?” Natalie had asked
naively, and there had been a roar of laughter.
“Not at all,” Terry had said. And chuckled. “This war, if it comes, is
every man's burden, rich and poor. Only the rich will give most, because
they have most to give.”
“I think that's ridiculous,” Natalie had said.
It was after that that Clayton began to wonder what she was planning.
He came home late one afternoon to find that they were spending the
evening in, and to find a very serious Natalie waiting, when he came
down-stairs dressed for dinner. She made an effort to be conversational,
but it was a failure. He was uneasily aware that she was watching him,
inspecting, calculating, choosing her moment. But it was not until they
were having coffee that she spoke.
“I'm uneasy about Graham, Clay.”
He looked up quickly.
“Yes?”
“I think he ought to go away somewhere.”
“He ought to stay here, and make a man of himself,” he came out, almost
in spite of himself. He knew well enough that such a note always roused
Natalie's antagonism, and he waited for the storm. But none came.
“He's not doing very well, is he?”
“He's not failing entirely. But he gives the best of himself outside the
mill. That's all.”
She puzzled him. Had she heard of Marion?
“Don't you think, if he was away from this silly crowd he plays with, as
he calls it, that he would be better off?”
“Where, for instance?”
“You keep an agent in England. He could go there. Or to Russia, if the
Russian contract goes through.”
He was still puzzled.
“But why England or Russia?”
“Anywhere out of this country.”
“He doesn't have to leave this country to get away from a designing
woman.”
From her astonished expression, he knew that he had been wrong. She was
not trying to get him away from Marion. From what?
She bent forward, her face set hard.
“What woman?”
Well, it was out. She might as well know it. “Don't you think it
possible, Natalie, that he may intend to marry Marion Hayden?”
There was a very unpleasant half-hour after that. Marion was a parasite
of the rich. She had abused Natalie's hospitality. She was designing.
She played bridge for her dress money. She had ensnared the boy.
And then:
“That settles it, I should think. He ought to leave America. If you have
a single thought for his welfare you'll send him to England.”
“Then you hadn't known about Marion when you proposed that before?”
“No. I knew he was not doing well. And I'm anxious. After all, he's my
boy. He is--”
“I know,” he supplemented gravely. “He is all you have. But I still
don't understand why he must leave America.”
It was not until she had gone up-stairs to her room, leaving him
uneasily pacing the library floor, that he found the solution. Old Terry
Mackenzie and his statement about conscription. Natalie wanted Graham
sent out of the country, so he would be safe. She would purchase for
hint a shameful immunity, if war came. She would stultify the boy to
keep him safe. In that hour of clear vision he saw how she had always
stultified the boy, to keep him safe. He saw her life a series of small
subterfuges, of petty indulgences, of little plots against himself, all
directed toward securing Graham immunity--from trouble at school, from
debt, from his own authority.
A wave of unreasoning anger surged over him, but with it there was pity,
too; pity for the narrowness of her life and her mind, pity for her very
selfishness. And for the first time in his life he felt a shamefaced
pity for himself. He shook himself violently. When a man got sorry for
himself--